THE public inquiry into plans to move Everton FC to Kirkby opened with a stark warning that the town’s “spiral of decline” will continue without the development.

Barristers on behalf of the football club, Knowsley council and supermarket giant Tesco argued that any regeneration of the town is unlikely to happen if the ambitious £400m plan is not approved.

But opponents to the scheme argued that other towns in the area would suffer as investment is lured away to Kirkby, and that Everton’s declining gates did not justify a larger stadium.

The plans, which will include a 50,000-seater ground, a superstore, housing, offices, commercial premises and car parks, will either be approved by local government minister Ruth Kelly or thrown out following the six-week inquiry.

Opening for the applicants, Patrick Clarkson, QC, said poverty and deprivation were rife in the town.

He said: “It’s falling behind and residents don’t have the opportunities that they should.

“Economic ambitions have not been achieved, with 18% fewer economically active people than nationally. It has two-and-a-half times more benefit claimants, and it is the top one per cent most deprived nationally.”

He also painted a grim picture of the town centre if the development did not go ahead.

He said: “Kirkby has a negative profile throughout Merseyside and the region.

“What is there is not of the standard that shoppers are entitled to expect. It’s a poor centre, and a large number of shoppers shop elsewhere.

“There has been no significant private sector development since the 1970s, and if nothing is done there will be another spiral of decline.”

But opponents to the scheme argued that the project, which would include around £50m from Tesco towards the new stadium, would sound the death knell of other towns.

Roger Lancaster, representing Sefton, St Helens, West Lancashire and Lancashire councils, which are all objecting, said town centres like Bootle, St Helens and Skelmersdale would all suffer.

But he added that because the development was just outside the town centre, it too would suffer.

He said: “There’s a fundamental question as to whether a more appropriate scale of development could be accommodated on the central sites.

“There will be no legitimate reason for people to go into the town centre.”

Tony Barton, speaking for the Kirkby Residents Action Group, added: “We are in support of progress but not at any cost.

“It will have a detrimental impact with roads blocked on match days or nights dependent on the whim of Sky Sports.

“This should be appropriate to the needs of the people and not for the benefit of multinational business.”

Dave Kelly, who lives in Kirkby but is the chair of the Keep Everton In Our City campaign, said there were around 35 other sites which had been looked at as potential homes for a new stadium, and that Kirkby was the wrong choice.

He said: “Everton does not belong in this town and it should stay in Liverpool, the Capital of Culture for 2008, because that’s where it belongs after 130 years of tradition.”

(Proceeding)

Ready for a change, by Marc Waddington

A WALK around Kirkby town centre is far from edifying. With its ugly “space-age” 1960s architecture, presumably the product of the idea that we would all be living on the moon by 1974, there is no denying something needs to be done.

The question this inquiry has been set up to answer is not whether the town needs new life breathing into it, but whether or not the Tesco proposal is the right way about it.

Opinion is divided across the town, and indeed the wider area. While there are those in Liverpool, including the council, who are fighting at all costs to see the club remain within its boundaries, there are those who say Kirkby will not survive without the £400m scheme.

The Gold Balance, a town centre pub named in honour of a local clergyman who invented a machine for testing the authenticity of sovereign coins, was the apt scene of a very different debate than the one taking place in the dull confines of the Kirkby Suite.

The argument for change from one patron was well put.

“Look at this town. If all you want is to buy pasties and shop in pound shops and go on the sunbeds, it’s great. But if you want to buy a pair of shoes, you’ve got to go elsewhere.”

But then there’s the other side of the fence, with some arguing that Kirkby has been chosen as a “last resort, when all other options had gone by the wayside”, that the council should be the town’s saviour, not a supermarket.

Whatever the outcome of the public inquiry, people in Kirkby need to come away from the inquiry encouraged that the council is the one with the vision for the regeneration of the town, and not that it has been sitting around waiting for big business to come to the rescue.

Every little helps, sure, but let’s hope that Kirkby is regenerated as Kirkby, and not Everton village or Tescotown.